Deep in the bowels of the Pentagon is a 25-year-old research projectdesigned to test a new way of encouraging large contractors to pass along someof their work to small businesses.

Known as the Comprehensive Subcontracting Plan Test Program, it was set upin 1990 to "determine if comprehensive subcontracting plans on a corporate,division or plant-wide basis [instead of for individual contracts] would leadto increased opportunities for small businesses," according to its website.

Participants in this elongated research project include a dozen majorcontractors, from Lockheed Martin Corp. to Northrop Grumman Corp.

Yet the program -- created when George H. W. Bush was president and housedwithin the Office of Small Business that reports to the undersecretary ofDefense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics -- has yet to release asingle report or data set. And an array of small business groups have longviewed the project as a wasteful distraction that is actually costing themopportunities by allowing the major firms leeway to get around thegovernmentwide goal of awarding 23 percent of contract dollars to smallbusiness.

This summer, the House and Senate have staked out opposing positions as tothe program's fate in negotiating the fiscal 2015 National DefenseAuthorization Act, which the House passed on May 22 and which awaits flooraction in the Senate.

The Defense Department itself, Government Executive has learned,thinks it's time to throw in the towel.

The most vocal crusader against the research program is Lloyd Chapman,president of the Petaluma, Calif.- based American Small Business League.Chapman, a former software salesman who has twice sued the Pentagon for theprogram's research results under the Freedom of Information Act, estimates thatit has cost small businesses $1 trillion in lost work. "It would be ridiculousfor Congress to extend a 25-year test program that has produced no results—I'venever heard of anything like it in my life," he told Government Executive.

Chapman's group argues that large firms in the program are exempted fromsubmitting subcontracting reports used by federal agencies to monitorcompliance with small business goals. This allows them to "dodge the FederalAcquisition Regulation 'liquidated damages' clause,' which requires anygovernment contractor that fails to meet its small business-subcontracting goalto pay damages to the federal government," the league says.

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